The Yonaguni or is a criticallyendangered Japanese

breed A breed is a specific group of domestic animals having homogeneous appearance (phenotype), homogeneous behavior, and/or other characteristics that distinguish it from other organisms of the same species. In literature, there exist several slig ...

of small horse. It is native to Yonaguni Island, in the Yaeyama Islands in south-western Japan, close to Taiwan. It is one of eight horse breeds native to Japan.

History

In 1968 there were 210 Yonaguni horses. By the early 1980s, the number had fallen to little more than fifty. Numbers subsequently recovered slightly; 85 head were recorded in 2008. The conservation status of the breed was listed as "critical" by the FAO in 2007. In 2003, genetic analysis using

microsatellite A microsatellite is a tract of repetitive DNA in which certain DNA motifs (ranging in length from one to six or more base pairs) are repeated, typically 5–50 times. Microsatellites occur at thousands of locations within an organism's genome. ...

data found the Yonaguni to be most closely related to the Miyako and Tokara smallisland breeds, and less closely related to various Mongolian horse breeds than were the

Dosanko The , also known as the and , is one of the eight extant Extant is the opposite of the word extinct. It may refer to: * Extant hereditary titles * Extant literature, surviving literature, such as ''Beowulf'', the oldest extant manuscript w ...

and Kiso breeds of the main islands of Japan.

Characteristics

Like the other Japanese island breeds, the Yonaguni is small. Average height at the withers is .

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Yonaguni (Horse) Horse breeds Horse breeds originating in Japan